Voters in some Denver suburbs have sent a message to their city officials that they want limits on the growth that has gripped their hometowns in recent years.

In Lakewood, whose city council rejected a six-month building moratorium earlier this year by a 6-5 vote, the results of a key city council race in the election that ended Tuesday appeared to hand slow-growth activists a one-vote majority on the council moving forward.

Meanwhile, in Greenwood Village, candidates who rallied against the idea of increasing the density of development near Interstate 25 in that city appeared to capture at least some seats on a council that had voted just six months ago to move forward with denser mixed-use development around the Orchard Station light-rail stop.

The trend wasn’t universal. Westminster residents easily re-elected Mayor Herb Atchison, who has been a proponent of using urban renewal to re-make several areas of the city for mixed-use and multifamily-housing developments. And they appeared to put into office a trio of council members who are aligned with Atchison’s vision.

And in the Wheat Ridge mayoral race, former city councilman Bud Starker, who has championed efforts at using urban renewal for redevelopment and for making the main artery through the city more narrow and pedestrian-friendly, maintained a six- to eight-point lead through the evening over former city councilman Joe DeMott, who said he did not want to spend more money examining the narrowing of 38th Avenue.

But the Lakewood and Greenwood Village elections in particular could have a ripple effect throughout the Denver area, where a number of residents have expressed concerns about increased traffic and hamstrung public resources, blaming both on growth.

Those results come even as metro business leaders seek to make the area the home of Amazon’s second headquarters, which could bring 50,000 new jobs and a $5 billion economic impact to the area.

“It’s been what we consider a very disappointing evening all across the board,” said Kathie Barstnar, executive director of NAIOP Colorado, an industry group for commercial real-estate developers that also opposed Denver’s “green roof” initiative and Broomfield’s drilling regulations, both of which appear to have passed.

“Much as they did a year ago in November, I think the voters are still expressing anger and concern and wanting to exert their right at the ballot box," Barstnar said.

Here are highlights of suburban election results:

Lakewood

Debate has raged in the city for several years about whether the 155,000-resident suburb is growing correctly or losing its character.

Voters in 2015 elected a mayor, Adam Paul, who advocated bringing in new developments and revitalizing areas like the West Colfax Avenue corridor. Paul cast the deciding vote earlier this year to block the proposed building moratorium.

But on Tuesday, voters appeared to elect attorney Mike Bieda to an open Belmar-area seat over Michael Gifford, executive director of the Associated General Contractors of Colorado. Bieda told the Denver Business Journal last month that he wanted to change what he’d perceived as an overly aggressive pro-growth policy at city hall.

He replaces outgoing Councilwoman Shakti, who had voted against the building moratorium. And advocates of slowing growth now hold six of the 11 seats on the council.

Both Bieda and Councilwoman Ramey Johnson — the moratorium sponsor who appears to have won re-election on Tuesday — have said they don’t want to bring back the moratorium but would prefer other methods for getting city leaders to open up the zoning code and reconsider some of the provisions that have made it easier for developers to put up more dense housing in various parts of the city.

“There’s more simple things we can do to slow (large projects) down and balance them out with the needs and the rights of the average citizen,” Bieda said before the election.

In addition to Bieda and Johnson, attorney David Skilling, who campaigned against “irresponsible and ill-conceived development,” won an open council seat. Meanwhile, moratorium opponent Karen Harrison won re-election, while Jacob LaBure, who has supported revitalization of major corridors in the city, also won seats.

Westminster

As of late Tuesday evening, Atchison appeared to be cruising to re-election with nearly 50 percent of the vote in a three-way race against two opponents who questioned the direction of the city.

One of them, city councilman Bruce Baker, was particularly outspoken against the city’s recent efforts to change its zoning code and use its urban-renewal statutes to allow for increased development of multi-family projects, saying that apartments take up valuable city resources without bringing in enough tax revenue to support themselves.

But Atchison said Tuesday that he believes the voters sent a strong message that they like his and council’s focus on the redevelopment of the old Westminster Mall, a push to do transit-oriented development and the growth of the Orchard Town Center area.

And he noted that the three people who appear to have captured council seats — incumbent Emma Pinter and newcomers Kathryn Skulley and David DeMott — all have expressed some support for the city’s current direction.

“My interpretation of the vote tonight is they agree with where we’re headed, they like where we’re going,” Atchison said.

Greenwood Village

Voters in this Arapahoe County city seemed to send a vastly different message, however.

Greenwood Village council members earlier this year approved a plan to rezone a 44-acre parcel around the Orchard Station light-rail stop just west of I-25 to include a mix of high-density office, retail, apartments and for-sale housing units, but then asked voters in the city to have the final say because of the controversy surrounding the proposals.

That spurred a number of former council members and new activists to run for city council with vows that they would not increase the density of development in the city, whose population density of 1,684.4 people per square mile is roughly half that of a city like Lakewood.

And on Tuesday, a number of those candidates — including former Mayor Pro Tem Dave Kerber — won seats, often over candidates who received endorsements from groups like the Denver Metro Association of Realtors and the Metro Housing Coalition.

“Please join me once again in Saving Our Village, this time not just from one developer but all the developers and City Council representatives who would change our Village and our way of life,” Kerber wrote on his campaign website before the election.

Wheat Ridge

Denver’s northwestern neighbor had a more nuanced debate around growth than other areas, though the subject certainly was the undercurrent running through the municipal election.

Mayoral candidate Starker has supported urban-renewal efforts and street-narrowing efforts in downtown, and his campaign focused on how to bring in retailers and employers that will make the 31,000-person city a place that is attractive for businesses to locate.

DeMott, meanwhile, spoke of continuing to grow residential rooftops and attracting the types of people to the city that would then make it attractive for businesses to move there.

Starker appeared to have captured the open mayor’s post, and he said late Tuesday that, despite the messages sent by voters in other communities, he thinks that what pushed him over the line was the desire for city residents to see change and to bring new economic vitality into their part of the metro area.

And he said he’ll be looking now to grow the city’s sales-tax base and capture opportunities that have been going to other suburbs.

“I think Wheat Ridge wants to look at the sort of commercial and economic development that it needs to get itself on sound economic footing,” Starker said. “We’ve seen commercial development go north of us and south of us and east of us and west of us in recent years. And we need to bring good stores and good opportunities to Wheat Ridge.”

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